These notebooks are all blank, calm, and satisfying. All three have attached ribbon bookmarks, elastic bands to hold them shut, and pockets in the inside back cover to tuck ephemera into.

SketchyNotebook (bottom left photo above) comes with thin sheets of printed plastic to place behind the page you’re writing on, as a guide for navigating the blank space. It starts with the templates intended for graphic designers (squares, triangles) and journalists (horizontal lines, vertical lines; not sure what this has to do with journalism), which is cool, but where it really dorks out is all the other templates they make: filmmakers get storyboards, mobile app developers get iPhones, interior designers get perspective grids, fashion designers get shoes, and so on. Sketchy opens completely flat, so you can write all the way to the gutter, and the perforated edges let you neatly remove the finished page. SketchyNotebook, from Taiwan, is offered in a variety of sizes, as the prize of a Kickstarter campaign, which ends November 5, 2016. The planned ship date is February, 2017.

What is it about the Quo Vadis Habana notebook (bottom right photo above) that makes it so pleasurable to use? Maybe it’s the paper, cream-colored and thick, the smoothest paper I’ve felt in a notebook. The rounded corners give it dignity, and the sewn binding suggests durability. The Habana is made in the USA, with certified sustainable paper.

The paper in the Flexible Notebook (middle photo above), from the Spanish company Miquelrius, is thin and white, so white, the whitest of white. Read the rest

One of Salvador Dalí's unpublished notebooks is up for auction at Sotheby's in Paris. Part of a fantastic array of Dada and Surrealist items for sale by the Bibliothèque R. & B. L. From CNN:

Among what has been deciphered is a page of writing devoted to "cadavres exquis", the address of filmmaker and friend of Surrealists Rene Clair and the name of Corti, a depository of the Surrealists' publications.

The book, currently owned by Bibliotheque R. & B. L., is believed to date from 1930-1935 and Sotheby's estimates it will sell for between $45,000-$56,000 (€40,000-50,000) in an auction in partnership with Binoche and Giquello.

If you like to write with fountain pens, sketch with colored pencils or otherwise enjoy the physical art of writing, Maruman's Mnemosyne is my notebook favorite paper to write on. Quad ruling on paper just makes me feel good, a throw back to college I guess. This fantastic, top-bound and slightly smaller than B5 size notebook has both!

Fountain pen inks dry fast, don't bleed through, and all of my pens glide over this paper. The slightly warm, off-white of this paper is also super pleasing to the eye, and is wonderful to work on.

Having just finished a year of math and science heavy coursework, I am confident in stating that the Cambridge Quad Wirebound Notebook is one of the best tools I've used all year. Notebooks may seem like a silly thing to get worked up about, but having used this day-in and day-out for a year I can attest that it makes a difference.

When I first started looking for a notebook I was astonished by how much variety existed (especially in the world of graph paper), and consequently how much vitriol crappy notebooks generate. Everything from paper thickness to perforation was a potential sore spot. After field testing several varieties it was immediately clear that the Cambridge Quad was the winner.